Penelope's Postscripts
by
Kate Douglas Wiggin
Part 1 out of 2
This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1915 Hodder and Stoughton edition.
Penelope's Postscripts
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Contents:
Penelope in Switzerland
Penelope in Venice
Penelope's Prints of Wales
Penelope in Devon
Penelope at Home
PENELOPE IN SWITZERLAND
A DAY IN PESTALOZZI-TOWN
Salemina and I were in Geneva. If you had ever travelled through
Europe with a charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental
table d'hote without being asked by an American vis-a-vis whether
she were one of the P.'s of Salem, Massachusetts, you would
understand why I call my friend Salemina. She doesn't mind it.
She knows that I am simply jealous because I came from a vulgarly
large tribe that never had any coat-of-arms, and whose ancestors
always sealed their letters with their thumb nails.
Whenever Francesca and I call her "Salemina," she knows, and we
know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors
in a sort of halo over her serene and dignified head, so she
remains unruffled under her petit nom, inasmuch as the casual
public comprehends nothing of its spurious origin and thinks it was
given her by her sponsors in baptism.
Francesca, Salemina, and I have very different backgrounds. The
first-named is an extremely pretty person of large income who is
travelling with us simply because her relatives think that she will
"see Europe" more advantageously under our chaperonage than if she
were accompanied by persons of her own age or "set."
Salemina is a philanthropist and educator of the first rank, and is
collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the service of
her own country when she returns to it, which will not be a moment
before her letter of credit is exhausted.
I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of experience
in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets
before I began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those
nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful
years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by
living with them. Even now the spell still works and it is the
curly head, the "shining morning face," the ready tear, the
glancing smile of childhood that enchains me and gives my brush
whatever skill it possesses.
We had not been especially high-minded or educational in
Switzerland, Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there is a
point where the improvement of one's mind seems a farce, and the
service of humanity, for the moment, a duty only born of a diseased
imagination.
How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake
Geneva and think about modern problems,--Improved Tenements, Child
Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the
Rising Civilization? Blue Lake Geneva!--blue as a woman's eye,
blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the lap of the green
earth like a great sparkling sapphire! Mont Blanc you know to be
just behind the clouds on the other side, and that presently, after
hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend to unveil
himself to your worshipful gaze.
"He is wise in his dignity and reserve," mused Salemina as we sat
on the veranda. "He is all the more sublime because he withdraws
himself from time to time. In fact, if he didn't see fit to cover
himself occasionally, one could neither eat nor sleep, nor do
anything but adore and magnify."
The day before this interview we had sailed to the end of the
sapphire lake and visited the "snow-white battlements" of the
Castle of Chillon; seen its "seven pillars of Gothic mould," and
its dungeons deep and old, where poor Bonnivard, Byron's famous
"Prisoner of Chillon," lay captive for so many years, and where
Rousseau fixes the catastrophe of his Heloise.
We had just been to Coppet too; Coppet where the Neckers lived and
Madame de Stael was born and lived during many years of her life.
We had wandered through the shaded walks of the magnificent chateau
garden, and strolled along the terrace where the eloquent Corinne
had walked with the Schlegels and other famous habitues of her
salon. We had visited Calvin's house at 11 Rue des Chanoines,
Rousseau's at No. 40 on the Grande Rue, and Voltaire's at Ferney.
And so we had been living the past, Salemina and I. But
"Early one morning,
Just as the day was dawning."
my slumbering conscience rose in Puritan strength and asserted its
rights to a hearing.
"Salemina," said I, as I walked into her room, "this life that we
are leading will not do for me any longer. I have been too much
immersed in ruins. Last night in writing to a friend in New York I
uttered the most disloyal and incendiary statements. I said that I
would rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America
was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to
any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public
buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the
butt of ridicule among future generations. I even proposed the
founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,--in which the
stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land and
erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins
wouldn't have any associations at first, but what of that? We have
plenty of poets and romancers; we could manufacture suitable
associations and fit them to the premises. At first, it is true,
they might not fire the imagination; but after a few hundred years,
in being crooned by mother to infant and handed down by father to
son, they would mellow with age, as all legends do, and they would
end by being hallowed by rising generations. I do not say they
would be absolutely satisfactory from every standpoint, but I do
say that they would be better than nothing.
"However," I continued, "all this was last night, and I have had a
change of heart this morning. Just on the borderland between
sleeping and waking, I had a vision. I remembered that to-day
would be Monday the 1st of September; that all over our beloved
land schools would be opening and that your sister pedagogues would
be doing your work for you in your absence. Also I remembered that
I am the dishonourable but Honorary President of a Froebel Society
of four hundred members, that it meets to-morrow, and that I can't
afford to send them a cable."
"It is all true," said Salemina. "It might have been said more
briefly, but it is quite true."
"Now, my dear, I am only a painter with an occasional excursion
into educational fields, but you ought to be gathering stories of
knowledge to lay at the feet of the masculine members of your
School Board."
"I ought, indeed!" sighed Salemina.
"Then let us begin!" I urged. "I want to be good to-day and you
must be good with me. I never can be good alone and neither can
you, and you know it. We will give up the lovely drive in the
diligence; the luncheon at the French restaurant and those heavenly
little Swiss cakes" (here Salemina was almost unmanned); "the
concert on the great organ and all the other frivolous things we
had intended; and we will make an educational pilgrimage to
Yverdon. You may not remember, my dear,"--this was said severely
because I saw that she meditated rebellion and was going to refuse
any programme which didn't include the Swiss cakes,--"you may not
remember that Jean Henri Pestalozzi lived and taught in Yverdon.
Your soul is so steeped in illusions; so submerged in the Lethean
waters of the past; so emasculated by thrilling legends, paltry
titles, and ruined castles, that you forget that Pestalozzi was the
father of popular education and the sometime teacher of Froebel,
our patron saint. When you return to your adored Boston, your
faithful constituents in that and other suburbs of Salem,
Massachusetts, will not ask you if you have seen the Castle of
Chillon and the terrace of Corinne, but whether you went to
Yverdon."
Salemina gave one last fond look at the lake and picked up her
Baedeker. She searched languidly in the Y's and presently read in
a monotonous, guide-book voice. "Um--um--um--yes, here it is,
'Yverdon is sixty-one miles from Geneva, three hours forty minutes,
on the way to Neuchatel and Bale.' (Neuchatel is the cheese place;
I'd rather go there and we could take a bag of those Swiss cakes.)
'It is on the southern bank of Lake Neuchatel at the influx of the
Orbe or Thiele. It occupies the site of the Roman town of
Ebrodunum. The castle dates from the twelfth century and was
occupied by Pestalozzi as a college.'"
This was at eight, and at nine, leaving Francesca in bed, we were
in the station at Geneva. Finding that we had time to spare, we
went across the street and bargained for an in-transit luncheon
with one of those dull native shopkeepers who has no idea of
American-French.
Your American-French, by the way, succeeds well enough so long as
you practise, in the seclusion of your apartment, certain assorted
sentences which the phrase-book tells you are likely to be needed.
But so far as my experience goes, it is always the unexpected that
happens, and one is eternally falling into difficulties never
encountered by any previous traveller.
For instance, after purchasing a cold chicken, some French bread,
and a bit of cheese, we added two bottles of lemonade. We managed
to ask for a glass, from which to drink it, but the man named two
francs as the price. This was more than Salemina could bear. Her
spirit was never dismayed at any extravagance, but it reared its
crested head in the presence of extortion. She waxed wroth. The
man stood his ground. After much crimination and recrimination I
threw myself into the breach.
"Salemina," said I, "I wish to remark, first: That we have three
minutes to catch the train. Second: That, occupying the position
we do in America,--you the member of a School Board and I the
Honorary President of a Froebel Society,--we cannot be seen
drinking lemonade from a bottle, in a public railway carriage; it
would be too convivial. Third: You do not understand this
gentleman. You have studied the language longer than I, but I have
studied it more lately than you, and I am fresher, much fresher
than you." (Here Salemina bridled obviously.) "The man is not
saying that two francs is the price of the glass. He says that we
can pay him two francs now, and if we will return the glass to-
night when we come home he will give us back one franc fifty
centimes. That is fifty centimes for the rent of the glass, as I
understand it."
Salemina's right hand, with the glass in it, dropped nervelessly at
her side. "If he uttered one single syllable of all that
rigmarole, then Ollendorf is a myth, that's all I have to say."
"The gift of tongues is not vouchsafed to all," I responded with
dignity. "I happen to possess a talent for languages, and I
apprehend when I do not comprehend."
Salemina was crushed by the weight of my self-respect, and we took
the tumbler, and the train.
It was a cloudless day and a beautiful journey, along the side of
the sapphire lake for miles, and always in full view of the
glorious mountains. We arrived at Yverdon about noon, and had
eaten our luncheon on the train, so that we should have a long,
unbroken afternoon. We left our books and heavy wraps in the
station with the porter, with whom we had another slight
misunderstanding as to general intentions and terms; then we
started, Salemina carrying the lemonade glass in her hand, with her
guide-book, her red parasol, and her Astrakhan cape. The tumbler
was a good deal of trouble, but her heart was set on returning it
safely to the Geneva pirate; not so much to reclaim the one franc
fifty centimes as to decide conclusively whether he had ever
proposed such restitution. I knew her mental processes, so I
refused to carry any of her properties; besides, the pirate had
used a good many irregular verbs in his conversation, and upon due
reflection I was a trifle nervous about the true nature of the
bargain.
The Yverdon station fronted on a great open common dotted with a
few trees. There were a good many mothers and children sitting on
the benches, and a number of young lads playing ball. The town
itself is one of the quaintest, quietest, and sleepiest in
Switzerland. From 1803 to 1810 it was a place of pilgrimage for
philanthropists from all parts of Europe; for at that time
Pestalozzi was at the zenith of his fame, having under him one
hundred and sixty-five pupils from Europe and America, and thirty-
two adult teachers, who were learning his method.
But Yverdon has lost its former greatness now! Scarcely any
English travellers go there and still fewer Americans. We fancied
that there was nothing extraordinary in our appearance;
nevertheless a small crowd of children followed at our heels, and
the shopkeepers stood at their open doors and regarded us with
intense interest.
"No English spoken here, that is evident," said Salemina ruefully;
"but you have such a gift for languages you can take the command
to-day and make the blunders and bear the jeers of the public. You
must find out where the new Pestalozzi Monument is,--where the
Chateau is,--where the schools are, and whether visitors are
admitted,--whether there is a respectable hotel where we can get
dinner,--whether we can get back to Geneva to-night, whether it's a
fast or a slow train, and what time it gets there,--whether the
methods of Pestalozzi are still maintained,--whether they know
anything about Froebel,--whether they know what a kindergarten is,
and whether they have one in the village. Some of these questions
will be quite difficult even for you."
Well, the monument was not difficult to find, at all events. We
accosted two or three small boys and demanded boldly of one of
them, "Ou est le monument de Pestalozzi, s'il vous plait?"
He shrugged his shoulders like an American small boy and said
vacantly, "Je ne sais pas."
"Of course he does know," said Salemina; "he means to be
disagreeable; or else 'monument' isn't monument."
"Well," I answered, "there is a monument in the distance, and there
cannot be two in this village."
Sure enough it was the very one we sought. It stands in a little
open place quite "in the business heart of the city,"--as we should
say in America, and is an exceedingly fine and impressive bit of
sculpture. The group of three figures is in bronze and was done by
M. Gruet of Paris.
The modelling is strong, the expression of Pestalozzi benign and
sweet, and the trusting upturned faces of the children equally
genuine and attractive.
One side of the pedestal bears the inscription:-
A
Pestalozzi
1746-1827
Monument erige
par souscription populaire
MDCCCXC
On a second side these words are carved in the stone:-
Sauveur des Pauvres a Neuhof
Pere des Orphelins a Stanz
Fondateur de l'ecole
populaire a Burgdorf
Educateur de l'humanite
a Yverdon
Tout pour les autres, pour lui,--rien!
An older monument erected in 1846 by the Canton of Argovia bears
this same inscription, save that it adds, "Preacher to the people
in 'Leonard and Gertrude.' Man. Christian. Citizen. Blessed be
his name!"
On the third side of the Yverdon Monument is Pestalozzi's noble
speech, fine enough indeed, to be cut in stone:-
"J'ai vecu moi-meme
comme un mendiant,
pour apprendre a des
mendiants a vivre comme
des hommes."
We sat a long time on the great marble pedestal, gazing into the
benevolent face, and reviewing the simple, self-sacrificing life of
the great educator, and then started on a tour of inspection.
After wandering through most of the shops, buying photographs and
mementoes, Salemina discovered that she had left the expensive
tumbler in one of them. After a long discussion as to whether
tumbler was masculine or feminine, and as to whether "Ai-je laisse
un verre ici?" or "Est-ce que j'ai laisse un verre ici?" was the
proper query, we retraced our steps, Salemina asking in one shop,
"Excusez-moi, je vous prie, mais ai-je laisse un verre ici?",--and
I in the next, "Je demands pardon, Madame, est-ce que j'ai laisse
un verre dans ce magasin-ci?--J'en ai perdu un, somewhere."
Finally we found it, and in response not to mine but to Salemina's
question, so that she was superior and obnoxious for several
minutes.
Our next point of interest was the old castle, which is still a
public school. Finding the caretaker, we visited first the museum
and library--a small collection of curiosities, books, and
mementoes, various portraits of Pestalozzi and his wife,
manuscripts and so forth. The simple-hearted woman who did the
honours was quite overcome by our knowledge of and interest in her
pedagogical hero, but she did not return the compliment. I asked
her if the townspeople knew about Friedrich Froebel, but she looked
blank.
"Froebel? Froebel?" she asked; "qui est-ce?"
"Mais, Madame," I said eloquently, "c'etait un grand homme! Un
heros! Le plus grand eleve de Pestalozzi! Aussi grand que
Pestalozzi soi-meme!"
("PLUS grand! Why don't you say plus grand?" murmured Salemina
loyally.)
"Je ne sais!" she returned, with an indifferent shrug of the
shoulders. "Je ne sais! Il y a des autres, je crois; mais moi, je
connais Pestalozzi, c'est assez!"
All the younger children had gone home, but she took us through the
empty schoolrooms, which were anything but attractive. We found an
unhappy small boy locked in one of them. I slipped behind the
concierge to chat with him, for he was so exactly like all other
small boys in disgrace that he made me homesick.
"Tu etais mechant, n'est ce-pas?" I whispered consolingly; "mais tu
seras sage demain, j'en suis sure!"
I thought this very pretty, but he wriggled from under my
benevolent hand, saying "Va!" (which I took to be, "Go 'long,
you!") "je n'etais mechant aujourd'hui et je ne serai pas sage
demain!"
I asked the concierge if the general methods of Pestalozzi were
still used in the schools of Yverdon, "Mais certainement!" she
replied as we went into a room where twenty to thirty girls of ten
years were studying. There were three pleasant windows looking out
into the street; the ordinary platform and ordinary teacher's
table, with the ordinary teacher (in an extraordinary state of
coma) behind it; and rather rude desks and seats for the children,
but not a single ornament, picture, map, or case of objects and
specimens around the room. The children were nice, clean,
pleasant, stolid little things with braided hair and pinafores.
The sole decoration of the apartment was a highly-coloured chart
that we had noticed on the walls of all the other schoolrooms.
Feeling that this must be a sacred relic, and that it probably
illustrated some of the Pestalozzian foundation principles, I
walked up to it reverently,
"Qu'est-ce-que c'est cela, Madame?" I inquired, rather puzzled by
its appearance.
"C'est la methode de Pestalozzi," the teacher replied absently.
I wished that we kindergarten people could get Froebel's
educational idea in such a snug, portable shape, and drew nearer to
gaze at it. I can give you a very complete description of the
pictures from memory, as I copied the titles verbatim et literatim.
The whole chart was a powerful moral object-lesson on the dangers
of incendiarism and the evils of reckless disobedience. It was
printed appropriately in the most lurid colours, and divided into
nine tableaux.
These were named as follows:-
I--LA VRAIE GAITE
Twelve or fifteen boys and girls are playing together so happily
and innocently that their good angels sing for joy.
II--UNE PROPOSITION FATALE!
Suddenly "LE PETIT Charles" says to his comrades, "Come! let us
build a fire!" LE PETIT Charles is a typical infant villain and is
surrounded at once by other incendiary spirits all in accord with
his insidious plans.
III--LA PROTESTATION
The Good Little Marie, a Sunday-school heroine of the true type,
approaches the group and, gazing heavenward, remarks that it is
wicked to play with matches. The G. L. M. is of saintly presence,-
-so clean and well groomed that you feel inclined to push her into
a puddle. Her hands are not full of vulgar toys and sweetmeats,
like those of the other children, but are extended graciously as if
she were in the habit of pronouncing benedictions.
IV--INSOUCIANCE!
LE PETIT Charles puts his evil little paw in his dangerous pockets
and draws out a wicked lucifer match, saying with abominable
indifference, "Bah! what do we care? We're going to build a fire,
whatever you say. Come on, boys!"
V--UN PLAISIR DANGEREUX!
The boys "come on." Led by "LE PETIT VILAIN Charles" they light a
dangerous little fire in a dangerous little spot. Their faces
shine with unbridled glee. The G. L. M. retires to a distance with
a few saintly followers, meditating whether she shall run and tell
her mother. "LE PETIT Paul," an infant of three summers, draws
near the fire, attracted by the cheerful blaze.
VI--MALHEUR ET INEXPERIENCE
LE PETIT Paul somehow or other tumbles into the fire. Nothing but
a desire to influence posterity as an awful example could have
induced him to take this unnecessary step, but having walked in he
stays in, like an infant John Rogers. The bad boys are so horror-
stricken it does not occur to them to pull him out, and the G. L.
M. is weeping over the sin of the world.
VII--TROP TARD!!
The male parent of LE PETIT Paul is seen rushing down an adjacent
Alp. He leads a flock of frightened villagers who have seen the
smoke and heard the wails of their offspring. As the last shred of
LE PETIT Paul has vanished in said smoke, the observer notes that
the poor father is indeed "too late."
VIII--DESESPOIR!!
The despair of all concerned would draw tears from the dryest eye.
Only one person wears a serene expression, and that is the G. L.
M., who is evidently thinking: "Perhaps they will listen to me the
next time."
IX--LA FIN!
The charred remains of LE PETIT Paul are being carried to the
cemetery. The G. L. M. heads the procession in a white veil. In a
prominent place among the mourners is "LE PAUVRE PETIT Charles," so
bowed with grief and remorse that he can scarcely be recognized.
It was a telling sermon! If I had been a child I should never have
looked at a match again; and old as I was, I could not, for days
afterwards, regard a box of them without a shudder. I thought that
probably Yverdon had been visited in the olden time by a series of
disastrous holocausts, all set by small boys, and that this was the
powerful antidote presented; so I asked the teacher whether
incendiarism was a popular failing in that vicinity and whether the
chart was one of a series inculcating various moral lessons. I
don't know whether she understood me or not, but she said no, it
was "la methode de Pestalozzi."
Just at this juncture she left the room, apparently to give the
pupils a brief study-period, and simultaneously the concierge was
called downstairs by a crying baby. A bright idea occurred to me
and I went hurriedly into the corridor where my friend was taking
notes.
"Salemina," said I, "here is an opportunity of a lifetime! We
ought to address these children in their native tongue. It will be
something to talk about in educational pow-wows. They do not know
that we are distinguished visitors, but we know it. A female
member of a School Board and the Honorary President of a Froebel
Society owe a duty to their constituents. You go in and tell them
who and what I am and make a speech in French. Then I'll tell them
who and what you are and make another speech."
Salemina assumed a modest violet attitude, declined the honour
absolutely, and intimated that there were persons who would prefer
talking in a language they didn't know rather than to remain
sensibly silent.
However the plan struck me as being so fascinating that I went back
alone, looked all ways to see if any one were coming, mounted the
platform, cleared my throat, and addressed the awe-struck
youngsters in the following words. I will spare you the French,
but you will perceive by the construction of the sentences, that I
uttered only those sentiments possible in an early stage of
language-study.
"My dear children," I began, "I live many thousand miles across the
ocean in America. You do not know me and I do not know you, but I
do know all about your good Pestalozzi and I love him"
"Il est mort!" interpolated one offensive little girl in the front
row.
Salemina tittered audibly in the corridor, and I crossed the room
and closed the door. I think the children expected me to put the
key in my pocket and then murder them and stuff them into the
stove.
"I know perfectly well that he is dead, my child," I replied
winningly,--"it is his life, his memory that I love.--And once upon
a time, long ago, a great man named Friedrich Froebel came here to
Yverdon and studied with your great Pestalozzi. It was he who made
kindergartens for little children, jardins des enfants, you know.
Some of your grand-mothers remember Froebel, I think?"
Hereupon two of the smaller chits shouted some sort of a negation
which I did not in the least comprehend, but which from large
American experience I took to be, "My grandmother doesn't!" "My
grandmother doesn't!"
Seeing that the others regarded me favourably, I continued, "It is
because I love Pestalozzi and Froebel, that I came here to day to
see your beautiful new monument. I have just bought a photograph
taken on that day last year when it was first uncovered. It shows
the flags and the decorations, the flowers and garlands, and ever
so many children standing in the sunshine, dressed in white and
singing hymns of praise. You are all in the picture, I am sure!"
This was a happy stroke. The children crowded about me and showed
me where they were standing in the photograph, what they wore on
the august occasion, how the bright sun made them squint, how a
certain malheureuse Henriette couldn't go to the festival because
she was ill.
I could understand very little of their magpie chatter, but it was
a proud moment. Alone, unaided, a stranger in a strange land, I
had gained the attention of children while speaking in a foreign
tongue. Oh, if I had only left the door open that Salemina might
have witnessed this triumph! But hearing steps in the distance, I
said hastily, "Asseyez-vous, mes enfants, tout-de-suite!" My tone
was so authoritative that they obeyed instantly, and when the
teacher entered it was as calm as the millennium.
We rambled through the village for another hour, dined at a quaint
little inn, gave a last look at the monument, and left for Geneva
at seven o'clock in the pleasant September twilight. Arriving a
trifle after ten, somewhat weary in body and slightly anxious in
mind, I followed Salemina into the tiny cake-shop across the street
from the station. She returned the tumbler, and the man, who
seemed to consider it an unexpected courtesy, thanked us volubly.
I held out my hand and reminded him timidly of the one franc fifty
centimes.
He inquired what I meant. I explained. He laughed scornfully. I
remonstrated. He asked me if I thought him an imbecile. I
answered no, and wished that I knew the French for several other
terms nearer the truth, but equally offensive. Then we retired,
having done our part, as good Americans, to swell the French
revenues, and that was the end of our day in Pestalozzi-town; not
the end, however, of the lemonade glass episode, which was always a
favourite story in Salemina's repertory
PENELOPE IN VENICE
This noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I
should describe her also as well as the other cities I saw in my
journey, partly because she gave me most louing and kinde
entertainment for the sweetest time (I must needes confesse) that
euer I spent in my life; and partly for that she ministered vnto me
more variety of remarkable and delicious objects than mine eyes
euer suruayed in any citie before, or euer shall . . . the fairest
Lady, yet the richest Paragon and Queene of Christendome.
Coryat's Crudities: 1611
VENICE, May 12--HOTEL PAOLO ANAFESTO
I have always wished that I might have discovered Venice for
myself. In the midst of our mad acquisition and frenzied
dissemination of knowledge, these latter days, we miss how many
fresh and exquisite sensations! Had I a daughter, I should like to
inform her mind on every other possible point and keep her in
absolute ignorance of Venice. Well do I realize that it would be
impracticable, although no more so, after all, than Rousseau's plan
of educating Emile, which certainly obtained a wide hearing and
considerable support in its time. No, tempting as it would be, it
would be difficult to carry out such a theory in these days of
logic and common sense, and in some moment of weakness I might
possibly succumb and tell her all about it, for fear that some
stranger, whom she might meet at a ball, would have the pleasure of
doing it first.
The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see Venice,
barring the lovely non-existent daughter, is Salemina.
It is our first visit, but, alas! we are, nevertheless, much better
informed than I could wish. Salemina's mind is particularly well
furnished, but, luckily she cannot always remember the point wished
for at the precise moment of need; so that, taking her all in all,
she is nearly as agreeable as if she were ignorant. Her knowledge
never bulks heavily and insistently in the foreground or middle-
distance, like that of Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it
should, in the haze of a melting and delicious perspective. She
has plenty of enthusiasms, too, and Miss Van Tyck has none.
Imagine our plight at being accidentally linked to that
encyclopaedic lady in Italy! She is an old acquaintance of
Salemina's and joined us in Florence, where she had been staying
for a month, waiting for her niece Kitty Schuyler,--Kitty Copley
now,--who is in Spain with her husband.
Miss Van Tyck would be endurable in Sheffield, Glasgow, Lyons,
Genoa, Kansas City, Pompeii, or Pittsburg, but she should never
have blighted Venice with her presence. She insisted, however, on
accompanying us, and I can only hope that the climate and
associations will have a relaxing effect on her habits of thought
and speech. When she was in Florence, she was so busy in "reading
up" Verona and Padua that she had no time for the Uffizi Gallery.
In Verona and Padua she was absorbed in Hare's "Venice,"
vaccinating herself, so to speak, with information, that it might
not steal upon, and infect her, unawares. If there is anything
that Miss Van abhors, it is knowing a thing without knowing that
she knows it; while for me, the most charming knowledge is the sort
that comes by unconscious absorption, like the free grace of God.
We intended to enter Venice in orthodox fashion, by moonlight, and
began to consult about trains when we were in Milan. The porter
said that there was only one train between the eight and the
twelve, and gave me a pamphlet on the subject, but Salemina objects
to an early start, and Miss Van refuses to arrive anywhere after
dusk, so it is fortunate that the distances are not great.
They have a curious way of reckoning time in Italy, for I found
that the train leaving Milan at eight-thirty was scheduled to
arrive at ten minutes past eighteen.
"You could never sit up until then, Miss Van," I said; "but, on the
other hand, if we leave later, to please Salemina, say at ten in
the morning, we do not arrive until eight minutes before twenty-
one! I haven't the faintest idea what time that will really be,
but it sounds too late for three defenceless women--all of them
unmarried--to be prowling about in a strange city."
It proved on investigation, however, that twenty-one o'clock is
only nine in Christian language (that is, one's mother tongue), so
we united in choosing that hour as being the most romantic
possible, and there was a full yellow moon as we arrived in the
railway station. My heart beat high with joy and excitement, for I
succeeded in establishing Miss Van with Salemina in one gondola,
while I took all the luggage in another, ridding myself thus
cleverly of the disenchanting influence of Miss Van's company.
"Do come with us, Penelope," she said, as we issued from the
portico of the station and heard, instead of the usual cab-drivers'
pandemonium, only the soft lapping of waves against the marble
steps--"Do come with us, Penelope, and let us enter 'dangerous and
sweet-charmed Venice' together. It does, indeed, look a 'veritable
sea-bird's nest.'"
She had informed me before, in Milan, that Cassiodorus, Theodoric's
secretary, had thus styled Venice, but somehow her slightest remark
is out of key. I can always see it printed in small type in a
footnote at the bottom of the page, and I always wish to skip it,
as I do other footnotes, and annotations, and marginal notes and
addenda. If Miss Van's mother had only thought of it, Addenda
would have been a delightful Christian name for her, and much more
appropriate than Celia.
If I should be asked on bended knees, if I should be reminded that
every intelligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of fresh
eyes to the study of the beautiful, if it should be affirmed that
the new note is as likely to be struck by the 'prentice as by the
master hand, if I should be assured that my diary would never be
read, I should still refuse to write my first impressions of
Venice. My best successes in life have been achieved by knowing
what not to do, and I consider it the finest common sense to step
modestly along in beaten paths, not stirring up, even there, any
more dust than is necessary. If my friends and acquaintances ever
go to Venice, let them read their Ruskin, their Goethe, their
Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, their Rogers, Gautier, Michelet,
their Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old "Coryat's Crudities,"
and be thankful I spared them mine.
It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a yellow May moon was hanging
in the blue. I wished with all my heart that it were a little
matter of seven or eight hundred years earlier in the world's
history, for then the people would have been keeping vigil and
making ready for that nuptial ceremony of Ascension-tide when the
Doge married Venice to the sea. Why can we not make pictures
nowadays, as well as paint them? We are banishing colour as fast
as we can, clothing our buildings, our ships, ourselves, in black
and white and sober hues, and if it were not for dear, gaudy Mother
Nature, who never puts her palette away, but goes on painting her
reds and greens and blues and yellows with the same lavish hand, we
should have a sad and discreet universe indeed.
But so long as we have more or less stopped making pictures, is it
not fortunate that the great ones of the olden time have been
eternally fixed on the pages of the world's history, there to glow
and charm and burn for ever and a day? To be able to recall those
scenes of marvellous beauty so vividly that one lives through them
again in fancy, and reflect, that since we have stopped being
picturesque and fascinating, we have learned, on the whole, to
behave much better, is as delightful a trend of thought as I can
imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the Piazza of San
Marco in my gondola.
I could see the Doge descend the Giant's Stairs, and issue from the
gate of the Ducal Palace. I could picture the great Bucentaur as
it reached the open beyond the line of the tide. I could see the
white-mitred Patriarch walking from his convent on the now deserted
isle of Sant' Elena to the shore where his barge lay waiting to
join the glittering procession.
And then there floated before my entranced vision the princely
figure of the Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing to
the little gallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising it
high, and dropping it into the sea. I could almost hear the faint
splash as it sank in the golden waves, and hear, too, the sonorous
words of the old wedding ceremony: "Desponsamus te, Mare, in
signum veri perpetuique dominii!"
Then when the shouts of mirth and music had died away and the
Bucentaur and its train had drifted back into the lagoon, the blue
sea, new-wedded, slept through the night with the May moon on her
breast and the silent stars for sentinels.
II
LA GIUDECCA, May 15,
CASA ROSA.
Not for a moment have we regretted leaving our crowded,
conventional hotel in Venice proper, for these rooms in a house on
the Giudecca. The very vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck sitting on a
balcony surrounded by a group of friends from the various Boston
suburbs, the vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck melting into delicious
distance with every movement of our gondola, even this was
sufficient for Salemina's happiness and mine, had it been
accompanied by no more tangible joys.
This island, hardly ten minutes by gondola from the Piazza of San
Marco, was the summer resort of the Doges, you will remember, and
there they built their pleasure-houses, with charming gardens at
the back--gardens the confines of which stretched to the Laguna
Viva. Our Casa Rosa is one of the few old palazzi left, for many
of them have been turned into granaries.
We should never have found this romantic dwelling by ourselves; the
Little Genius brought us here. The Little Genius is Miss Ecks, who
draws, and paints, and carves, and models in clay, preaching and
practising the brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman in
the intervals; Miss Ecks, who is the custodian of all the talents
and most of the virtues, and the invincible foe of sordid common
sense and financial prosperity. Miss Ecks met us by chance in the
Piazza and breathlessly explained that she was searching for paying
guests to be domiciled under the roof of Numero Sessanta, Giudecca.
She thought we should enjoy living there, or at least she did very
much, and she had tried it for two years; but our enjoyment was not
the special point in question. The real reason and desire for our
immediate removal was that the padrona might pay off a vexatious
and encumbering mortgage which gave great anxiety to everybody
concerned, besides interfering seriously with her own creative
work.
"You must come this very day," exclaimed Miss Ecks. "The Madonna
knows that we do not desire boarders, but you are amiable and
considerate, as well as financially sound and kind, and will do
admirably. Padrona Angela is very unhappy, and I cannot model
satisfactorily until the house is on a good paying basis and she is
putting money in the bank toward the payment of the mortgage. You
can order your own meals, entertain as you like, and live precisely
as if you were in your own home."
The Little Genius is small, but powerful, with a style of oratory
somewhat illogical, but always convincing at the moment. There
were a good many trifling objections to our leaving Miss Van Tyck
and the hotel, but we scarcely remembered them until we and our
luggage were skimming across the space of water that divides Venice
from our own island.
We explored the cool, wide, fragrant spaces of the old casa, with
its outer walls of faded, broken stucco, all harmonized to a
pinkish yellow by the suns and winds of the bygone centuries. We
admired its lofty ceilings, its lovely carvings and frescoes, its
decrepit but beautiful furniture, and then we mounted to the top,
where the Little Genius has a sort of eagle's eyrie, a floor to
herself under the eaves, from the windows of which she sees the
sunlight glimmering on the blue water by day, and the lights of her
adored Venice glittering by night. The walls are hung with
fragments of marble and wax and stucco and clay; here a beautiful
foot, or hand, or dimple-cleft chin; there an exquisitely ornate
facade, a miniature campanile, or a model of some ancient palazzo
or chiesa.
The little bedroom off at one side is draped in coarse white
cotton, and is simple enough for a nun. Not a suggestion there of
the fripperies of a fine lady's toilet, but, in their stead, heads
of cherubs, wings of angels, slender bell-towers, friezes of
acanthus leaves,--beauty of line and form everywhere, and not a
hint of colour save in the riotous bunches of poppies and oleanders
that lie on the broad window-seats or stand upright in great blue
jars.
Here the Little Genius lives, like the hermit crab that she calls
herself; here she dwells apart from kith and kin, her mind and
heart and miracle-working hands taken captive by the charms of the
siren city of the world.
When we had explored Casa Rosa from turret to foundation stone we
went into the garden at the rear of the house--a garden of flowers
and grape-vines, of vegetables and fruit-trees, of birds and bee-
hives, a full acre of sweet summer sounds and odours, stretching to
the lagoon, which sparkled and shimmered under the blue Italian
skies. The garden completed our subjugation, and here we stay
until we are removed by force, or until the padrona's mortgage is
paid unto the last penny, when I feel that the Little Genius will
hang a banner on the outer ramparts, a banner bearing the
relentless inscription: "No paying guests allowed on these
premises until further notice."
Our domestics are unique and interesting. Rosalia, the cook, is a
graceful person with brown eyes, wavy hair, and long lashes, and
when she is coaxing her charcoal fire with a primitive fan of
cock's feathers, her cheeks as pink as oleanders, the Little Genius
leads us to the kitchen door and bids us gaze at her beauty. We
are suitably enthralled at the moment, but we suffer an inevitable
reaction when the meal is served, and sometimes long for a plain
cook.
Peppina is the second maid, and as arrant a coquette as lives in
all Italy. Her picture has been painted on more than one
fisherman's sail, for it is rumoured that she has been six times
betrothed and she is still under twenty. The unscrupulous little
flirt rids herself of her suitors, after they become a weariness to
her, by any means, fair or foul, and her capricious affections are
seldom good for more than three months. Her own loves have no deep
roots, but she seems to have the power of arousing in others
furious jealousy and rage and a very delirium of pleasure. She
remains light, gay, joyous, unconcerned, but she shakes her lovers
as the Venetian thunderstorms shake the lagoons. Not long ago she
tired of her chosen swain, Beppo the gardener, and one morning the
padrona's ducks were found dead. Peppina, her eyes dewy with
crocodile tears, told the padrona that although the suspicion
almost rent her faithful heart in twain, she must needs think Beppo
the culprit. The local detective, or police officer, came and
searched the unfortunate Beppo's humble room, and found no
incriminating poison, but did discover a pound or two of contraband
tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty
francs, and jilted by his perfidious lady-love, who speedily
transferred her affections. If she had been born in the right
class and the right century, Peppina would have made an admirable
and brilliant Borgia.
Beppo sent a stinging reproof in verse to Peppina by the new
gardener, and the Little Genius read it to us, to show the poetic
instinct of the discarded lover, and how well he had selected his
rebuke from the store of popular verses known to gondoliers and
fishermen of Venice:-
"No te fidar de l' albaro che piega,
Ne de la dona quando la te giura.
La te impromete, e po la te denega;
No te fidar de l' albaro che piega."
("Trust not the mast that bends.
Trust not a woman's oath;
She'll swear to you, and there it ends,
Trust not the mast that bends.")
Beppo, Salemina, and I were talking together one morning,--just a
casual meeting in the street,--when Peppina passed us. She had a
market-basket in each hand, and was in her gayest attire, a fresh
crimson rose between her teeth being the last and most fetching
touch to her toilet. She gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders as
she glanced at Beppo's hanging head and hungry eye, and then with a
light laugh hummed, "Trust not the mast that bends," the first line
of the poem that Beppo had sent her.
"It is better to let her go," I said to him consolingly.
"Si, madama; but"--with a profound sigh--"she is very pretty."
So she is, and although my idea of the fitness of things is
somewhat unsettled when Peppina serves our dinner wearing a yoke
and sleeves of coarse lace with her blue cotton gown, and a bunch
of scarlet poppies in her hair, I can do nothing in the way of
discipline because Salemina approves of her as part of the picture.
Instead of trying to develop some moral sense in the little
creature, Salemina asked her to alternate roses and oleanders with
poppies in her hair, and gave her a coral comb and ear-rings on her
birthday. Thus does a warm climate undermine the strict virtue
engendered by Boston east winds.
Francesco--Cecco for short--is general assistant in the kitchen,
and a good gondolier to boot. When our little family is increased
by more than three guests at dinner, Cecco is pressed into dining-
room service, and becomes under-butler to Peppina. Here he is not
at ease. He scrubs his tanned face until it shines like San
Domingo mahogany, brushes his black hair until the gloss resembles
a varnish, and dons coarse white cotton gloves to conceal his work-
stained hands and give an air of fashion and elegance to the
banquet. His embarrassment is equalled only by his earnestness and
devotion to the dreaded task. Our American guests do not care what
we have upon our bill of fare when they can steal a glance at the
intensely dramatic and impassioned Cecco taking Pina into a corner
of the dining-room and, seizing her hand, despairingly endeavour to
find out his next duty. Then, with incredibly stiff back, he
extends his right hand to the guest, as if the proffered plate held
a scorpion instead of a tidbit. There is an extra butler to be
obtained when the function is a sufficiently grand one to warrant
the expense, but as he wears carpet slippers and Pina flirts with
him from soup to fruit, we find ourselves no better served on the
whole, and prefer Cecco, since he transforms an ordinary meal into
a beguiling comedy.
"What does it matter, after all?" asks Salemina. "It is not life
we are living, for the moment, but an act of light opera, with the
scenes all beautifully painted, the music charming and melodious,
the costumes gay and picturesque. We are occupying exceptionally
good seats, and we have no responsibility whatever: we left it in
Boston, where it is probably rolling itself larger and larger, like
a snowball; but who cares?"
"Who cares, indeed?" I echo. We are here not to form our
characters or to improve our minds, but to let them relax; and when
we see anything which opposses the Byronic ideal of Venice (the use
of the concertina as the national instrument having this tendency),
we deliberately close our eyes to it. I have a proper regard for
truth in matters of fact like statistics. I want to know the exact
population of a town, the precise total of children of school age,
the number of acres in the Yellowstone Park, and the amount of
wheat exported in 1862; but when it comes to things touching my
imagination I resent the intrusion of some laboriously excavated
truth, after my point of view is all nicely settled, and my saints,
heroes, and martyrs are all comfortably and picturesquely arranged
in their respective niches or on their proper pedestals.
When the Man of Fact demolishes some pretty fallacy like William
Tell and the apple, he should be required to substitute something
equally delightful and more authentic. But he never does. He is a
useful but uninteresting creature, the Man of Fact, and for a
travelling companion or a neighbour at dinner give me the Man of
Fancy, even if he has not a grain of exact knowledge concealed
about his person. It seems to me highly important that the
foundations of Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, or Spokane Falls
should be rooted in certainty; but Verona, Padua, and Venice--well,
in my opinion, they should be rooted in Byron and Ruskin and
Shakespeare.
III
CASA ROSA, May 18.
Such a fanfare of bells as greeted our ears on the morning of our
first awakening in Casa Rosa!
"Rise at once and dress quickly, Salemina!" I said. "Either an
heir has been born to the throne, or a foreign Crown Prince has
come to visit Venice, or perhaps a Papal Bull is loose in the
Piazza San Marco. Whatever it is, we must not miss it, as I am
keeping a diary."
But Peppina entered with a jug of hot water, and assured us that
there were no more bells than usual; so we lay drowsily in our
comfortable little beds, gazing at the frescoes on the ceiling.
One difficulty about the faithful study of Italian frescoes is that
they can never be properly viewed unless one is extended at full-
length on the flat of one's honourable back (as they might say in
Japan), a position not suitable in a public building.
The fresco on my bedroom ceiling is made mysteriously attractive by
a wilderness of mythologic animals and a crowd of cherubic heads,
wings and legs, on a background of clouds; the mystery being that
the number of cherubic heads does not correspond with the number of
extremities, one or two cherubs being a wing or a leg short.
Whatever may be their limitations in this respect, the old painters
never denied their cherubs cheek, the amount of adipose tissue
uniformly provided in that quarter being calculated to awake envy
and jealousy on the part of the predigested-food-babies pictured in
the American magazine advertisements.
Padrona Angela furnishes no official key to the ceiling-paintings
of Casa Rosa; and yesterday, during the afternoon call of four
pretty American girls, they asked and obtained our permission to
lie upon the marble floor and compete for a prize to be given to
the person who should offer the cleverest interpretation of the
symbolisms in the frescoes. It may be stated that the entire
difference of opinion proved that mythologic art is apt to be
misunderstood. After deciding in the early morning what our
bedroom ceiling is intended to represent (a decision made and
unmade every day since our arrival), Salemina and I make a
leisurely toilet and then seat ourselves at one of the open windows
for breakfast.
The window itself looks on the Doge's Palace and the Campanile, St.
Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark's being visible through a maze of
fishing-boats and sails, some of these artistically patched in
white and yellow blocks, or orange and white stripes, while others
of grey have smoke-coloured figures in the tops and corners.
Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is
busy with people: gondoliers, boys with nets for crab-catching,
'longshoremen, and facchini. This is when ships are loading or
unloading, but at other times we look upon a tranquil scene.
Peppina brings in dell' acqua bollente, and I make the coffee in
the little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salemina
heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious
treasure in her possession.
The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and
nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned pat of
solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the
comb. The cows are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is
brought into Venice in large cans. In the early morning, when the
light is beginning to steal through the shutters, one hears the
tinkling of a mule's bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and,
if one runs to the window, may see the contadini, looking, in their
sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, driving
through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari. It is
then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the pats of butter,
daintily set on green leaves, delivered for a seven-o'clock
breakfast.
Finally la colazione is spread on our table by the window. A neat
white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of
delicate china. There is a pot of honey, an egg a la coque for
each, a plate of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of
scarlet cherries on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious
berries in their frills; sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny
wild strawberries that seem to have grown with their faces close
pressed to the flowers, so sweet and fragrant are they.
This al fresco morning meal makes a delicious prelude to our
comfortable dejeuner a la fourchette at one o'clock, when the
Little Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of
work, joins us and gives zest to the repast. Her own breakfast,
she explains, is a dejeuner a la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the
peasant who carves a bit of bread and cheese in his hand, and she
promises us a sight, some leisure day, of a certain dejeuner a la
toothpick celebrated for the moment among the artists. A
mysterious painter, shabby, but of a certain elegance and
distinction even in his poverty, comes daily at noon into a well-
known restaurant. He buys for five sous a glass of chianti, a roll
for one sou, and with stately grace bestows another sou upon the
waiter who serves him. These preparations made, he breaks the roll
in small bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden
toothpick, he dips them in wine before eating them.
"This may be a frugal repast," he has an air of saying, "but it is
at least refined, and no man would dare insult me by asking me
whether or not I leave the table satisfied."
IV
CASA ROSA, May 20.
One of the pleasantest sights to be noted from our windows at
breakfast time is Angelo making ready our private gondola for the
day. Angelo himself is not attractive to the eye by reason of the
silliest possible hat for a man of forty-five whose hair is
slightly grey. It is a white straw sailor, with a turned-up brim,
a blue ribbon encircling the crown, and a white elastic under the
chin; such a hat as you would expect to see crowning the flaxen
curls of mother's darling boy of four.
I love to look at the gondola, with its solemn caracoling like that
of a possible water-horse, of which the arched neck is the graceful
ferro. This is a strange, weird, beautiful thing when the black
gondola sways a little from side to side in the moonlight. Angelo
keeps ours polished so that it shines like silver in the morning
sun, and he has an exquisite conscientiousness in rubbing every
trace of brass about his precious craft. He has a little box under
the prow full of bottles and brushes and rags. The cushions are
laid on the bank of the canal; the pieces of carpet are taken out,
shaken, and brushed, and the narrow strips are laid over the curved
wood ends of the gondola to keep the sun from cracking them. The
felze, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny four-legged stools
and the carved chair are wiped off, and occasionally a thin coat of
black paint is needed here and there, and a touching-up of the gold
lines which relieve the sombreness. The last thing to be done is
to polish the vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and
when these are disposed in their niches on each side of the felze,
Angelo waves his infantile hat gaily to us at the window, and
smiles his readiness to be off.
On other mornings we watch the loading and unloading of grain.
There are many small boats always in view, their orange sails
patched with all sorts of emblems and designs in a still deeper
colour, and day before yesterday a large ship appeared at our
windows and attached itself to our very doorsteps, much to the
wrath of Salemina, who finds the poetry of existence much disturbed
under the new conditions. All is life and motion now. The men are
stripped naked to the waist, with bright handkerchiefs on their
heads, and, in many cases, others tied over their mouths. Each has
a thick wisp of short twine strings tucked into his waistband. The
bags are weighed by one, who takes out or puts in a shovelful of
grain, as the case may be. Then the carrier ties up his bag with
one of the twine strings, two other men lift it to his shoulder,
while a boy removes a pierced piece of copper from a long wire and
gives it to him, this copper being handed in turn to still another
man, who apparently keeps the account. This not uninteresting,
indeed, but sordid and monotonous operation began before eight
yesterday morning and even earlier to-day, obliging Salemina to
decline strawberries and eat her breakfast with her back to the
window.
This afternoon at four the injured lady departed on a tour in Miss
Palett's gondola. Miss Palett is a water-colourist who has lived
in Venice for five years and speaks the language "like a native."
(You are familiar with the phrase, and perhaps familiar, too, with
the native like whom they speak.)
Returning after tea, Salemina was observed to radiate a kind of
subdued triumph, which proved on investigation to be due to the
fact that she had met the comandante of the offending ship and that
he had gallantly promised to remove it without delay. I cannot
help feeling that the proper time for departure had come; but this
destroys the story and robs the comandante of his reputation for
chivalry.
As Miss Palett's gondola neared the grain-ship, Salemina, it seems,
spied the commanding officer pacing the deck.
"See," she said to her companion, "there is a gang-plank from the
side of the ship to that small flat-boat. We could perfectly well
step from our gondola to the flat-boat and then go up and ask
politely if we may be allowed to examine the interesting grain-
ship. While you are interviewing the first officer about the
foreign countries he has seen, I will ask the comandante if he will
kindly tie his boat a little farther down on the island. No, that
won't do, for he may not speak English; we should have an awkward
scene, and I should defeat my own purposes. You are so fluent in
Italian, suppose you call upon him with my card and let me stay in
the gondola."
"What shall I say to the man?" objected Miss Palett.
"Oh, there's plenty to say," returned Salemina. "Tell him that
Penelope and I came over from the hotel on the Grand Canal only
that we might have perfect quiet. Tell him that if I had not
unpacked my largest trunk, I should not stay an instant longer.
Tell him that his great, bulky ship ruins the view; that it hides
the most beautiful church and part of the Doge's Palace. Tell him
that I might as well have stayed at home and built a cottage on the
dock in Boston Harbour. Tell him that his steam-whistles, his
anchor-droppings, and his constant loadings or unloadings give us
headache. Tell him that seven or eight of his sailormen brought
clean garments and scrubbing brushes and took their bath at our
front entrance. Tell him that one of them, almost absolutely nude,
instead of running away to put on more clothing, offered me his arm
to assist me into the gondola."
Miss Palett demurred at the subject-matter of some of these
remarks, and affirmed that she could not translate others into
proper Italian. She therefore proposed that Salemina should write
a few dignified protests on her visiting-card, and her own part
would be to instruct the man in the flat-boat to deliver it at once
to his superior officer. The comandante spoke no English,--of that
fact the sailorman in the flat-boat was certain,--but as the
gondola moved away, the ladies could see the great man pondering
over the little piece of pasteboard, and it was plain that he was
impressed. Herein lies perhaps a seed of truth. The really great
thing triumphs over all obstacles, and reaches the common mind and
heart in some way, delivering its message we know not how.
Salemina's card teemed with interesting information, at least to
the initiated. Her surname was in itself a passport into the best
society. To be an X- was enough of itself, but her Christian name
was one peculiar to the most aristocratic and influential branch of
the X-s. Her mother's maiden name, engraved at full length in the
middle, established the fact that Mr. X- had not married beneath
him, but that she was the child of unblemished lineage on both
sides. Her place of residence was the only one possible to the
possessor of three such names, and as if these advantages were not
enough, the street and number proved that Salemina's family
undoubtedly possessed wealth; for the small numbers, and especially
the odd numbers, on that particular street, could be flaunted only
by people of fortune.
You have now all the facts in your possession, and I can only add
that the ship weighed anchor at twilight, so Salemina again gazed
upon the Doge's Palace and slept tranquilly.
V
CASA ROSA, May 22
I am like the schoolgirl who wrote home from Venice: "I am sitting
on the edge of the Grand Canal drinking it all in, and life never
seemed half so full before." Was ever the city so beautiful as
last night on the arrival of foreign royalty? It was a memorable
display and unique in its peculiar beauty. The palaces that line
the canal were bright with flags; windows and water-steps were
thronged, the broad centre of the stream was left empty.
Presently, round the bend below the Rialto, swept into view a
double line of gondolas--long, low, gleaming with every hue of
brilliant colour, most of them with ten, some with twelve,
gondoliers in resplendent liveries, red, blue, green, white,
orange, all bending over their oars with the precision of machinery
and the grace of absolute mastery of their craft. In the middle,
between two lines, came one small and beautifully modelled gondola,
rowed by four men in red and black, while on the white silk
cushions in the stern sat the Prince and Princess. There was no
splash of oar or rattle of rowlock; swiftly, silently, with an air
of stately power and pride, the lovely pageant came, passed, and
disappeared under the shining evening sky and the gathering shadows
of "the dim, rich city." I never saw, or expect to see, anything
of its kind so beautiful.
I stay for hours in the gondola, writing my letters or watching the
thousand and one sights of the streets, for I often allow Salemina
and the Little Genius to tread their way through the highways and
byways of Venice while I stay behind and observe life from beneath
the grateful shade of the black felze.
The women crossing the many little bridges look like the characters
in light opera; the young girls, with their hair bobbed in a round
coil, are sometimes bareheaded and sometimes have a lace scarf over
their dark, curly locks. A little fan is often in their hands, and
one remarks the graceful way in which the crepe shawl rests upon
the women's shoulders, remembering that it is supposed to take
generations to learn to wear a shawl or wield a fan.
My favourite waiting-place is near the Via del Paradiso, just where
some scarlet pomegranate blossoms hang out over the old brick walls
by the canal-side, and where one splendid acanthus reminds me that
its leaves inspired some of the most beautiful architecture in the
world; where, too, the ceaseless chatter of the small boys cleaning
crabs with scrubbing-brushes gives my ear a much-needed familiarity
with the language.
Now a girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso,
making a brilliant silhouette against the blue sky. She stops to
prattle with the man at the bell-shop just at the corner of the
little calle. There are beautiful bells standing in rows in the
window, one having a border of finely traced crabs and sea-horses
at the base; another has a top like a Doge's cap, while the body of
another has a delicately wrought tracery, as if a fish-net had been
thrown over it.
Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the Piazza
San Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the tourists. If
there are only three or four, I sometimes compromise with my
conscience and give them something. If one gets a lira put into
small coppers, one can give them a couple of centesimi apiece
without feeling that one is pauperizing them, but that one is
fostering the begging habit in young Italy is a more difficult sin
to face.
To-day when the boys took off the tattered hats from their bonny
little heads, all black waves and riotous curls, and with disarming
dimples and sparkling eyes presented them to me for alms, I looked
at them with smiling admiration, thinking how like Raphael's
cherubs they were, and then said in my best Italian: "Oh, yes, I
see them; they are indeed most beautiful hats. I thank you for
showing them to me, and I am pleased to see you courteously take
them off to a lady."
This American pleasantry was passed from mouth to mouth gleefully,
and so truly enjoyed that they seemed to forget they had been
denied. They ran, still laughing and chattering, to the wood-
carver's shop near-by and told him the story, or so I judged, for
he came to his window and smiled benignly upon me as I sat in the
gondola with my writing-pad on my knees. I was pleased at the
friendly glance, for he is the hero of a pretty little romance, and
I long to make his acquaintance.
It seems that, some years ago, the Queen, with one lady-in-waiting
in attendance, came to his shop quite early in the morning. Both
were plainly dressed in cotton gowns, and neither made any
pretensions. He was carving something that could not be dropped, a
cherub's face that had to be finished while his thought of it was
fresh. Hurriedly asking pardon, he continued his work, and at end
of an hour raised his eyes, breathless and apologetic, to look at
his visitors. The taller lady had a familiar appearance. He gazed
steadily, and then, to his surprise and embarrassment, recognized
the Queen. Far from being offended, she respected his devotion to
his art, and before she left the shop she gave him a commission for
a royal staircase. I am going to ask the Little Genius to take me
to see his work, but, alas! there will be an unsurmountable barrier
between us, for I cannot utter in my new Italian anything but the
most commonplace and conventional statements.
VI
CASA ROSA, May 28.
Oh, this misery of being dumb, incoherent, unintelligible, foolish,
inarticulate in a foreign land, for lack of words! It is unwise, I
fear, to have at the outset too high an ideal either in grammar or
accent. As our gondola passed one of the hotels this afternoon, we
paused long enough to hear an intrepid lady converse with an
Italian who carried a mandolin and had apparently come to give a
music lesson to her husband. She seemed to be from the Middle West
of America, but I am not disposed to insist upon this point, nor to
make any particular State in the Union blush for her crudities of
speech. She translated immediately everything that she said into
her own tongue, as if the hearer might, between French and English,
possibly understand something.
"Elle nay pars easy--he ain't here," she remarked, oblivious of
gender. "Elle retoorneray ah seas oors et dammi--he'll be back
sure by half-past six. Bone swar, I should say Bony naughty--Good-
night to you, and I won't let him forget to show up to-morrer."
This was neither so ingenious nor so felicitous as the language-
expedient of the man who wished to leave some luggage at a railway
station in Rome, and knowing nothing of any foreign tongue but a
few Latin phrases, mostly of an obituary character, pointed several
times to his effects, saying, "Requiescat in pace," and then,
pointing again to himself, uttered the one pregnant word
"Resurgam." This at any rate had the merit of tickling his own
sense of humour, if it availed nothing with the railway porters,
and if any one remarks that he has read the tale in some ancient
"Farmers' Almanack," I shall only retort that it is still worth
repeating.
My little red book on the "Study of Italian Made Easy for the
Traveller" is always in my pocket, but it is extraordinary how
little use it is to me. The critics need not assert that
individuality is dying out in the human race and that we are all
more or less alike. If we were, we should find our daily practical
wants met by such little books. Mine gives me a sentence
requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at
midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can
the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after
to-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of
starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the frills
dipped.
Before going to the dressmaker's yesterday, I spent five minutes
learning the Italian for the expression "This blouse bags; it sits
in wrinkles between the shoulders." As this was the only criticism
given in the little book, I imagined that Italian dressmakers erred
in this special direction. What was my discomfiture to find that
my blouse was much too small and refused to meet. I could only use
gestures for the dressmaker's enlightenment, but in order not to
waste my recently gained knowledge, I tried to tell a melodramatic
tale of a friend of mine whose blouse bagged and sat in wrinkles
between the shoulders. It was not successful, because I was
obliged to substitute the past for the present tense of the verb.
Somebody says that if we learn the irregular verbs of a language
first, all will be well. I think by the use of considerable mental
agility one can generally avoid them altogether, although it
materially reduces one's vocabulary; but at all events there is no
way of learning them thoroughly save by marrying a native. A
native, particularly after marriage, uses the irregular verbs with
great freedom, and one acquires a familiarity with them never
gained in the formal instruction of a teacher. This method of
education may be considered radical, and in cases where one is
already married, illegal and bigamous, but on the whole it is not
attended with any more difficulty than the immersing of one's self
in a study day after day and month after month learning the
irregular verbs from a grammar.
My rule in studying a language is to seize upon some salient point,
or one generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one
known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery. A
little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance
elsewhere. In Italian, for example, the polite way of addressing
one's equal is to speak in the third person singular, using Ella
(she) as the pronoun. "Come sta Ella?" (How are you? but
literally "How is she?")
I pay great attention to this detail, and make opportunities to
meet our padrona on the staircase and say "How is she?" to her. I
can never escape the feeling that I am inquiring for the health of
an absent person; moreover, I could not understand her symptoms if
she should recount them, and I have no language in which to
describe my own symptoms, which, so far as I have observed, is the
only reason we ever ask anybody else how he feels.
To remember on the instant whether one is addressing equals,
superiors, or inferiors, and to marshal hastily the proper pronoun,
adds a new terror to conversation, so that I find myself constantly
searching my memory to decide whether it shall be:
Scusate or Scusi, Avanti or Passi, A rivederci or Addio, Che cosa
dite? or Che coma dice? Quanto domandate? or Quanto domanda? Dove
andate? or Dove va? Come vi chiamate? or Come si chiama? and so
forth and so forth until one's mind seems to be arranged in
tabulated columns, with special N.B.'s to use the infinitive in
talking to the gondolier.
Finding the hours of time rather puzzling as recorded in the "Study
of Italian Made Easy," I devoted twenty-four hours to learning how
to say the time from one o'clock at noon to midnight, or thirteen
to twenty-three o'clock. My soul revolted at the task, for a
foreign tongue abounds in these malicious little refinements of
speech, invented, I suppose, to prevent strangers from making too
free with it on short acquaintance. I found later on that my
labour had been useless, and that evidently the Italians themselves
have no longer the leisure for these little eccentricities of
language and suffer them to pass from common use. If the Latin
races would only meet in convention and agree to bestow the
comfortable neuter gender on inanimate objects and commodities, how
popular they might make themselves with the English-speaking
nations; but having begun to "enrich" their language, and make it
more "subtle" by these perplexities, centuries ago, they will no
doubt continue them until the end of time.
If one has been a devoted patron of the opera or student of music,
one has an Italian vocabulary to begin with. This, if accompanied
by the proper gestures (for it is vain to speak without liberal
movements, of the hands, shoulders, and eyebrows), this, I
maintain, will deceive all the English-speaking persons who may be
seated near your table in a foreign cafe.
The very first evening after our arrival, Jack Copley asked
Salemina and me to dine with him at the best restaurant in Venice.
Jack Copley is a well of nonsense undefiled, and he, like
ourselves, had been in Italy only a few hours. He called for us in
his gondola, and in the row across from the Giudecca we amused
ourselves by calling to mind the various Italian words or phrases
with which we were familiar. They were mostly titles of arias or
songs, but Jack insisted, notwithstanding Salemina's protestations,
that, properly interlarded with names of famous Italians, he could
maintain a brilliant conversation with me at table, to the envy and
amazement of our neighbours. The following paragraph, then, was
our stock in trade, and Jack's volubility and ingenuity in its use
kept Salemina quite helpless with laughter:-
Guarda che bianca luna--Il tempo passato--Lascia ch' io pianga--
Dolce far niente--Batti batti nel Masetto--Da capo--Ritardando--
Andante--Piano--Adagio--Spaghetti--Macaroni--Polenta--Non e ver--
Ah, non giunge--Si la stanchezza--Bravo--Lento--Presto--Scherzo--
Dormi pura--La ci darem la mano--Celeste Aida--Spirito gentil--Voi
che sapete--Crispino e la Comare--Pieta, Signore--Tintoretto--
Boccaccio--Garibaldi--Mazzini--Beatrice Cenci--Gordigiani--Santa
Lucia--Il mio tesoro--Margherita--Umberto--Vittoria Colonna -Tutti
frutti--Botticelli--Una furtiva lagrima.
No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley's acquaintance
could believe with what effect he used these unrelated words and
sentences. I could only assist, and lead him to ever higher
flights of fancy.
We perceive with pleasure that our mother tongue presents equal
difficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of affairs. The so-
called mineral water we use at table is specially still and dead,
and we think it may have been compared to its disadvantage with
other more sparkling beverages, since every bottle bears a printed
label announcing, "To Distrust of the mineral waters too foaming,
since that they do invariable spread the Stomach."
We learn also by studying another bottle that "The Wermouth is a
white wine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who leso me aromatic
herbs." Who leso me we printed in italics in our own minds, giving
the phrase a pure Italian accent until we discovered that it was
the somewhat familiar adjective "wholesome."
In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual pasteboard
fans bearing explanations of the frescoes:-
Room I. In the middle. The sin of our fathers.
On every side. The ovens of Babylony. Moise saved from the water.
Room II. In the middle. Moise who sprung the water.
On every side. The luminous column in the dessert and the ardent
wood.
Room III. In the middle. Elia transported in the heaven.
On every side. Eliseus dispansing brods.
Room IV. The wood carvings are by Anonymous. The tapestry shows
the multiplications of brods and fishs.
VII
CASA ROSA, May 30.
We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa--a battle over the breaking
of a huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a pitcher belonging
to the Little Genius.
The room that leads from the dining-room to the kitchen is reached
by the descent of two or three stone steps. It is always full, and
is like the orthodox hell in one respect, that though myriads of
people are seen to go into it, none ever seem to come out. It is
not more than twelve feet square, and the persons most continuously
in it, not counting those who are in transit, are the Padrona
Angela; the Padrona Angela's daughter, Signorina Rita; the
Signorina Rita's temporary suitor; the suitor's mother and cousin;
the padrona's great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two
families, and somebody's baby: not always the same baby; any baby
answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter of
tongues.
This morning, the door from the dining-room being ajar, I heard a
subdued sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went nearer to
the scene of action, finding the cause in a heap of broken china in
the centre of the floor. I glanced at the excited company, but
there was nothing to show me who was the criminal. There was a
spry girl washing dishes; the fritter-woman (at least we call her
so, because she brings certain goodies called, if I mistake not,
frittoli); the gardener's wife; Angelo, the gondolier; Peppina, the
waiting-maid; and the men that had just brought the sausages and
sweetmeats for the gondolier's ball, which we were giving in the
evening. There was also the contralto, with a large soup-ladle in
her hand. (We now call Rosalia, the cook, "the contralto," because
she sings so much better than she cooks that it seems only proper
to distinguish her in the line of her special talent.)
The assembled company were all talking and gesticulating at once.
There was a most delicate point of justice involved, for, as far as
I could gather, the sweetmeat-man had come in unexpectedly and
collided with the sausage-man, thereby startling the fritter-woman,
who turned suddenly and jostled the spry girl: hence the pile of
broken china.
The spry girl was all for justice. If she had carelessly or
wilfully dropped the pitcher, she would have been willing to suffer
the extreme penalty,--the number of saints she called upon to
witness this statement was sufficient to prove her honesty,--but
under the circumstances she would be blessed if she suffered
anything, even the abuse that filled the air. The fritter-woman
upbraided the sweetmeat-man, who in return reviled the sausage-
vender, who remarked that if Angelo or Peppina had received the
sausages at the door, as they should, he would never have been in
the house at all; adding a few picturesque generalizations
concerning the moral turpitude of Angelo's parents and the vicious
nature of their offspring.
The contralto, who was divided in her soul, being betrothed to the
sausage-vender, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the arena,
armed with the soup-ladle, and dispensed injustice on all sides.
The feud now reached its height. There is nothing that the chief
participants did not call one another, and no intimation or
aspersion concerning the reputation of ancestors to the remotest
generation that was not cast in the others' teeth. The spry girl
referred to the sausage-vender as a generalissimo of all the
fiends, and the compliments concerning the gentle art of cookery
which flew between the fritter-woman and the contralto will not
bear repetition. I listened breathlessly, hoping to hear one of
the party refer to somebody as the figure of a pig (strangely
enough the most unforgettable of insults), for each of the
combatants held, suspended in air, the weapon of his choice--broken
crockery, soup-ladle, rolling-pin, or sausage. Each, I say,
flourished the emblem of his craft wildly in the air--and then,
with a change of front like that of the celebrated King of France
in the Mother Goose rhyme, dropped it swiftly and silently; for at
this juncture the Little Genius flew down the broad staircase from
her eagle's nest. Her sculptor's smock surmounted her blue cotton
gown, and her blond hair was flying in the breeze created by her
rapid descent. I wish I could affirm that by her gentle dignity
and serene self-control she awed the company into silence, or that
there was a holy dignity about her that held them spellbound; but
such, unhappily, is not the case. It was her pet blue pitcher that
had been broken--the pitcher that was to serve as just the right
bit of colour at the evening's feast. She took command of the
situation in a masterly manner--a manner that had American energy
and decision as its foundation and Italian fluency as its
superstructure. She questioned the virtue of no one's ancestors,
cast no shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of any one's posterity,
called no one by the name of any four-footed beast or crawling,
venomous thing, yet she somehow brought order out of chaos. Her
language (for which she would have been fined thirty days in her
native land) charmed and enthralled the Venetians by its delicacy,
reserve, and restraint, and they dispersed pleasantly. The
sausage-vender wished good appetite to the cook,--she had need of
it, Heaven knows, and we had more,--while the spry girl embraced
the fritter-woman ardently, begging her to come in again soon and
make a longer visit.
VIII
CASA ROSA, June 10
I am saying all my good-byes--to Angelo and the gondola; to the
greedy pigeons of San Marco, so heavy in the crop that they can
scarcely waddle on their little red feet; to the bees and birds and
flowers and trees of the beautiful garden behind the casa; to the
Little Genius and her eagle's nest on the house-top; to "the city
that is always just putting out to sea." It has been a month of
enchantment, and although rather expensive, it is pleasant to think
that the padrona's mortgage is nearly paid.
It is a saint's day, and to-night there will be a fiesta. Coming
home to our island, we shall hear the laughter and the song
floating out from the wine shops and the caffes; we shall see the
lighted barges with their musicians; we shall thrill with the cries
of "Viva Italia! viva el Re!" The moon will rise above the white
palaces; their innumerable lights will be reflected in the glassy
surface of the Grand Canal. We shall feel for the last time "the
quick silent passing" of the only Venetian cab.
"How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola!"
To-morrow we shall be rowed against the current to Padua. We shall
see Malcontenta and its ruined villa: Oriago and Mira and the
campanile of Dolo. Venice will lie behind us, but she will never
be forgotten. Many a time on such a night as this we shall say
with other wandering Venetians:-
"O Venezia benedetta!
Non ti voglio piu lasciar!"
PENELOPE'S PRINTS OF WALES
And at length it chanced that I came to the fairest Valley in the
World, wherein were trees of equal growth; and a river ran through
the Valley, and a path was by the side of the river. And I
followed the path until midday, and I continued my journey along
the remainder of the Valley until the evening: and at the
extremity of a plain I came to a lone and lustrous Castle, at the
foot of which was a torrent.
We are coaching in Wales, having journeyed by easy stages from
Liverpool through Llanberis, Penygwryd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert
and Dolgelly on our way to Bristol, where we shall make up our
minds as to the next step; deciding in solemn conclave, with floods
of argument and temperamental differences of opinion, what is best
worth seeing where all is beautiful and inspiring. If I had
possessed a little foresight I should have avoided Wales, for,
having proved apt at itinerary doggerel, I was solemnly created,
immediately on arrival, Mistress of Rhymes and Travelling Laureate
to the party--an office, however honourable, that is no sinecure
since it obliges me to write rhymed eulogies or diatribes on
Dolgelly, Tan-y-Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh
hamlets whose names offer breakneck fences to the Muse.
I have not wanted for training in this direction, having made a
journey (heavenly in reminiscence) along the Thames, stopping at
all the villages along its green banks. It was Kitty Schuyler and
Jack Copley who insisted that I should rhyme Henley and Streatley
and Wargrave before I should be suffered to eat luncheon, and they
who made me a crown of laurel and hung a pasteboard medal about my
blushing neck when I succeeded better than usual with Datchett!--I
well remember Datchett, where the water-rats crept out of the reeds
in the shallows to watch our repast; and better still do I recall
Medmenham Abbey, which defied all my efforts till I found that it
was pronounced Meddenam with the accent on the first syllable. The
results of my enforced tussles with the Muse stare at me now from
my Commonplace Book.
"Said a rat to a hen once, at Datchett,
'Throw an egg to me, dear, and I'll catch it!'
'I thank you, good sir,
But I greatly prefer
To sit on mine HERE till I hatch it.'"
"Few hairs had the Vicar of Medmenham,
Few hairs, and he still was a-sheddin' 'em,
But had none remained,
He would not have complained,
Because there was FAR too much red in 'em!"
It was Jack Copley, too, who incited me to play with rhymes for
Venice until I produced the following tour de force:
"A giddy young hostess in Venice
Gave her guests hard-boiled eggs to play tennis.
She said 'If they SHOULD break,
What odds would it make?
You can't THINK how prolific my hen is."
Reminiscences of former difficulties bravely surmounted faded into
insignificance before our first day in Wales was over.
Jack Copley is very autocratic, almost brutal in discipline. It is
he who leads me up to the Visitors' Books at the wayside inns, and
putting the quill in my reluctant fingers bids me write in cheerful
hexameters my impressions of the unpronounceable spot. My
martyrdom began at Penygwryd (Penny-goo-rid'). We might have
stopped at Conway or some other town of simple name, or we might
have allowed the roof of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the
Saracen's Read to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a
comparatively easy task; but no; Penygwryd it was, and the
outskirts at that, because of two inns that bore on their swinging
signs the names: Ty Ucha and Ty Isaf, both of which would make any
minor poet shudder. When I saw the sign over the door of our
chosen hostelry I was moved to disappear and avert my fate. Hunger
at length brought me out of my lair, and promising to do my duty, I
was allowed to join the irresponsible ones at luncheon.
Such a toothsome feast it was! A delicious ham where roses and
lilies melted sweetly into one another; some crisp lettuces, ale in
pewter mugs, a good old cheese, and that stodgy cannon-ball the
"household loaf," dear for old association's sake. We were served
at table by the granddaughter of the house, a little damsel of
fifteen summers with sleek brown hair and the eyes of a doe. The
pretty creature was all blushes and dimples and pinafores and
curtsies and eloquent goodwill. With what a sweet politeness do
they invest their service, some of these soft-voiced British maids!
Their kindness almost moves one to tears when one is fresh from the
resentful civility fostered by Democracy.
As we strolled out on the greensward by the hawthorn hedge we were
followed by the little waitress, whose name, however pronounced,
was written Nelw Evans. She asked us if we would write in the
"Locked Book," whereupon she presented us with the key. It seems
that there is an ordinary Visitors' Book, where the common herd is
invited to scrawl its unknown name; but when persons of evident
distinction and genius patronize the inn, this "Locked Book" is put
into their hands.
I found that many a lord and lady had written on its pages, and men
mighty in Church and State had left their mark, with much bad
poetry commendatory of the beds, the food, the scenery, and the
fishing. Nobody, however, had given a line to pretty Nelw Evans;
so I pencilled her a rhyme, for which I was well paid in dimples:-
"At the Inn called the Penygwryd
A sweet little maiden is hid.
She's so rosy and pretty
I write her this ditty
And leave it at Penygwryd."
Our next halt was at Bettws-y-Coed, where we passed the week-end.
It was a memorable spot, as I failed at first to rhyme the name,
and only succeeded under threats of a fate like unto that of the
immortal babes in the wood. I left the verse to be carved on a
bronze tablet in the village church, should any one be found fitted
to bear the weight of its eulogy:-
"Here lies an old woman of Bettws-y-CoED;
Wherever she went, it was there that she goED.
She frequently said: 'My own row have I hoED,
And likewise the church water-mark have I toED.
I'm therefore expecting to reap what I've sowED,
And go straight to heaven from Bettws-y-CoED.'"
At another stage of our journey, when the coaching tour was nearly
ended, we were stopping at the Royal Goat at Beddgelert. We were
seated about the cheerful blaze (one and sixpence extra), portfolio
in lap, making ready our letters for the post. I announced my
intention of writing to Salemina, left behind in London with a
sprained ankle, and determined that the missive should be saturated
with local colour. None of us were able to spell the few Welsh
words we had picked up in our journeyings, but I evaded the
difficulties by writing an exciting little episode in which all the
principal substantives were names of Welsh towns, dragged in
bodily, and so used as to deceive the casual untravelled reader.
I read it aloud. Jack Copley declared that it made capital sense,
and sounded as if it had happened exactly as stated. Perhaps you
will agree with him:-
DDOLGHYHGGLLWN, WALES
. . . We left Bettws-y-Coed yesterday morning, and coached thirty-
three miles to this point. (How do you like this point when you
see it spelled?) We lunched at a wayside inn, and as we journeyed
on we began to see pposters on the ffences announcing the ffact
that there was to be a Festiniog that day in the village of
Portmadoc, through which we were to pass.
I always enoyw a Festiniog yn any country, and my hheart beat hhigh
with anticipation. Yt was ffive o'clock yn the cool of the dday,
and ppresently the roadw became ggay with the returning
festinioggers. Here was a fine Llanberis, its neck encircled with
shining meddals wonw in previous festiniogs; there, just behind, a
wee shaggy Rhyl led along proudly by its owner. Evydently the
gayety was over for the day, for the ppeople now came yn crowds,
the women with gay plaid Rhuddlans over their shoulders and straw
Beddgelerts on their hheads.
The guardd ttooted his hhorn continuously, for we now approached
the principalw street of the village, where hhundreds of ppeople
were conggreggated. Of course there were allw manner of Dolgelleys
yn the crowd, and allw that had taken pprizes were gayly decked
with ribbons. Just at this moment the hhorn of our gguard
ffrightened a superb Llanrwst, a spirited black creature of
enormous size. It made a ddash through the lines of tterrified
mothers, who caught their innocent Pwllhelis closer to their
bbosoms. In its madd course it bruised the side of a huge
Llandudno hitched to a stout Tyn-y-Coed by the way-side. It bbroke
its Bettws and leaped ynto the air. Ddeath stared us yn the face.
David the whip grew ppale, and signalled to Absalom the gguard to
save as many lives as he could and leave the rrest to Pprovidence.
Absalom spprang from his seat, and taking a sharp Capel Curig from
his ppocket (Hheaven knows how he chanced to have it about his
pperson), he aimed straight between the Llangollens of the
infuriated Llandudno. With a moan of baffled rrage, he sank to
earth with a hheavy thuddw. Absalom withdrew the bbloody Capel
Curig from the dying Llandudno, and wiping yt on his Penygwryd,
replaced yt yn his pocket for future possible use.
The local Dolwyddelan approached, and ordered a detachment of Tan-
y-Bulchs to remove the corpse of the Llandudno. With a shudder we
saw him borne to his last rrest, for we realized that had yt not
bbeen for Absalom's Capel Curig we had bbeen bburied yn an
unpronounceable Welsh ggrave.
PENELOPE IN DEVON
We are in Bristol after a week's coaching in Wales; the Jack
Copleys, Tommy Schuyler, Mrs. Jack's younger brother, and Miss Van
Tyck, Mrs. Jack's "Aunt Celia," who played a grim third in that
tour of the English Cathedrals during which Jack Copley was
ostensibly studying architecture but in reality courting Kitty
Schuyler. Also there is Bertram Ferguson, whom we call "Atlas"
because he carries the world on his shoulders, gazing more or less
vaguely and absent-mindedly at all the persons and things in the
universe not in need of immediate reformation.
We had journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Carnarvon,
Llanberis, Penygwyrd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert, and Tan-y-Bulch.
Arriving finally at Dolgelly, we sent the coach back to Carnarvon
and took the train to Ross,--the gate of the Wye,--from whence we
were to go down the river in boats. As to that, everybody knows
Symond's Yat, Monmouth, Raglan Castle, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow; but
at Bristol a brilliant idea took possession of Jack Copley's mind.
Long after we were in bed o' nights the blessed man interviewed
landlords and studied guidebooks that he might show us something
beautiful next day, and above all, something out of the common
route. Mrs. Jack didn't like common routes; she wanted her
appetite titillated with new scenes.
At breakfast we saw the red-covered Baedeker beside our host's
plate. This was his way of announcing that we were to "move on,"
like poor Jo in "Bleak House." He had already reached the
marmalade stage, and while we discussed our bacon and eggs and
reviled our coffee, he read us the following:-
"Clovelly lies in a narrow and richly-wooded combe descending
abruptly to the sea." -
"Any place that descends to the sea abruptly or otherwise has my
approval in advance," said Tommy.
"Be quiet, my boy."--"It consists of one main street, or rather a
main staircase, with a few houses climbing on each side of the
combe so far as the narrow space allows. The houses, each standing
on a higher or lower level than its neighbour, are all whitewashed,
with gay green doors and lattices." -
"Heavenly!" cried Mrs. Jack. "It sounds like an English Amalfi;
let us take the first train."
- "And the general effect is curiously foreign; the views from the
quaint little pier and, better still, from the sea, with the pier
in the foreground, are also very striking. The foundations of the
cottages at the lower end of the village are hewn out of the living
rock."
"How does a living rock differ from other rocks--dead rocks?" Tommy
asked facetiously. "I have always wanted to know; however, it
sounds delightful, though I can't remember anything about
Clovelly."
"Did you never read Dickens's 'Message from the Sea,' Thomas?"
asked Miss Van Tyck. Aunt Celia always knows the number of the
unemployed in New York and Chicago, the date when North Carolina
was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white
ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the
longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from
American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented
the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado
and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the
principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the
difference between peritonitis and appendicitis, the date of the
introduction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of
mileage on African railways, the influence of Christianity in the
Windward Islands, who wrote "There's Another, not a Sister," "At
Midnight in his Guarded Tent," "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy
Forever," and has taken in through the pores much other information
likely to be of service on journeys where an encyclopaedia is not
available.
If she could deliver this information without gibes at other
people's ignorance she would, of course, be more agreeable; but it
is only justice to say that a person is rarely instructive and
agreeable at the same moment.
"It is settled, then, that we go to Clovelly," said Jack. "Bring
me the ABC Guide, please" (this to the waiter who had just brought
in the post).
"Quite settled, and we go at once," said Mrs. Jack, whose joy at
arriving at a place is only equalled by her joy in leaving it.
"Penelope, hand me my letters, please; if you were not my guest I
should say I had never witnessed such an appetite. Tommy, what
news from father? Atlas, how can you drink three cups of British
coffee? Oh-h-h, how more than lucky, how heavenly, how
providential! Egeria is coming!"
"Egeria?" we cried with one rapturous voice.
"Read your letter carefully, Kitty," said Jack; "you will probably
find that she wishes she might come, but finds it impossible."
"Or that she certainly would come if she had anything to wear,"
drawled Tommy.
"Or that she could come perfectly well if it were a few days
later," quoth I.
Mrs. Jack stared at us superciliously, and lifting an absurd watch
from her antique chatelaine, observed calmly, "Egeria will be at
this hotel in one hour and fifteen minutes; I telegraphed her the
night before last, and this letter is her reply."
"Who is Egeria?" asked Atlas, looking up from his own letters.
"She sounds like a character in a book."
Mrs. Jack: "You begin, Penelope."
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